To sustain absolute faith in the statue he reminds his reader's that "God is able even of these stones to raise up seed to Abraham," and goes into a long argument, discussing such transformations as those of King Atlas and Pygmalion's statue, with a multitude of others, winding up with the case, given in the miracles of St. Jerome, of a heretic who was changed into a log of wood, which was then burned.
He gives a statement of the Hebrews that Lot's wife received her peculiar punishment because she had refused to add salt to the food of the angels when they visited her, and he preaches a short sermon in which he says that, as salt is the condiment of food, so the salt statue of Lot's wife "gives us a condiment of wisdom."(433)
(433) For Bernard of Breydenbach, I have used the Latin edition, Mentz,
1486, in the White collection, Cornell University, also the German
edition in the Reyssbuch. For John of Solms, Werli, and the like, see
the Reyssbuch, which gives a full text of their travels. For Fabri
(Schmid), see, for his value, Robinson; also Tobler, Bibliographia, pp.
53 et seq.; and for texts, see Reyssbuch, pp. 122b et seq., but best the
Fratris Fel. Fabri Evagatorium, ed. Hassler, Stuttgart, 1843, vol. iii,
pp. 172 et seq. His book now has been translated into English by the
Palestine Pilgrims' Text Society.
There were, indeed, many discrepancies in the testimony of travellers regarding the salt pillar—so many, in fact, that at a later period the learned Dom Calmet acknowledged that they shook his belief in the whole matter; but, during this earlier time, under the complete sway of the theological spirit, these difficulties only gave new and more glorious opportunities for faith.
For, if a considerable interval occurred between the washing of one salt pillar out of existence and the washing of another into existence, the idea arose that the statue, by virtue of the soul which still remained in it, had departed on some mysterious excursion. Did it happen that one statue was washed out one year in one place and another statue another year in another place, this difficulty was surmounted by believing that Lot's wife still walked about. Did it happen that a salt column was undermined by the rains and fell, this was believed to be but another sign of life. Did a pillar happen to be covered in part by the sea, this was enough to arouse the belief that the statue from time to time descended into the Dead Sea depths—possibly to satisfy that old fatal curiosity regarding her former neighbours.
Did some smaller block of salt happen to be washed out near the statue, it was believed that a household dog, also transformed into salt, had followed her back from beneath the deep. Did more statues than one appear at one time, that simply made the mystery more impressive.
In facts now so easy of scientific explanation the theologians found wonderful matter for argument.
One great question among them was whether the soul of Lot's wife did really remain in the statue. On one side it was insisted that, as Holy Scripture declares that Lot's wife was changed into a pillar of salt, and as she was necessarily made up of a soul and a body, the soul must have become part of the statue. This argument was clinched by citing that passage in the Book of Wisdom in which the salt pillar is declared to be still standing as "the monument of an unbelieving SOUL." On the other hand, it was insisted that the soul of the woman must have been incorporeal and immortal, and hence could not have been changed into a substance corporeal and mortal. Naturally, to this it would be answered that the salt pillar was no more corporeal than the ordinary materials of the human body, and that it had been made miraculously immortal, and "with God all things are possible." Thus were opened long vistas of theological discussion.(434)
(434) For a brief statement of the main arguments for and against the
idea that the soul of Lot's wife remained within the salt statue, see
Cornelius a Lapide, Commentarius in Pentateuchum, Antwerp, 1697, chap.
xix.
As we enter the sixteenth century the Dead Sea myths, and especially the legends of Lot's wife, are still growing. In 1507 Father Anselm of the Minorites declares that the sea sometimes covers the feet of the statue, sometimes the legs, sometimes the whole body.